Node.js and Docker realigned

It’s not really a surprise, but after just over six months since the “forking” of both Node.js and Docker, the two different projects have ended up back in some sort of alignment. For Node.js, it was the reunification with io.js under the Node.js Foundation, which was officially launched under the Linux Foundation’s umbrella. The Node.js and io.js technical development is now driven by a technical committee and hopefully this will all work out well for all.

The Docker situation is a little more complex. There’s no big group hug like with Node.js. Instead, there’s an official middle ground, the Open Container Project. The announcement of a vendor-neutral (how can it be vendor neutral when it’s founded by vendors?) project to come up with containerisation technology basically sees Docker throw its specs and CoreOS throw its specs for containers into the same ring and see what comes out.

OCP says it’ll try and come up with a future spec independent of what’s layered on top of it, not associated with any project or vendor and be portable. So no, there won’t be a standard command set or management layer, there shouldn’t be any lock-ins and there probably will emerge as standard with a scope so small that it’ll end up as a tiny checkbox on a requirements list.

On the plus side, with that out of the way, there’s room for people to get innovating with the rest of the containerisation stack, which is where all the vendors are heading right now. That list is long too – Amazon, Cisco, EMC, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Red Hat, VMWare and more. With the essential core in neutral hands, the game always moves on. As for the spec itself? Keep your eyes on the OCP’s Github Repository where they say they’ll have something by end of July.

Let’s hope that OCP keeps to its goals better than that other OCP, you know, the one that was building Delta City in the soon-to-be ruins of Old Detroit. That just didn’t work out well at all.